It's amazing to see again and again how teams complicate their lives without any necessity. They dream up features "urgently" required by their imaginary customers and then start a death march to launch them at an arbitrary, self-invented date. Why is it so hard to simplify things and get going? Let's have a look at … Continue reading Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
Month: April 2010
A/B Testing with Webrat
It all began a year ago. We wanted to introduce a new navigation bar, but gradually, gaining feedback (and confidence) that it was the right upgrade for our users. My idea at that time was a random cookie which would show 20% of our users the new navigation while giving them a separate google analytics … Continue reading A/B Testing with Webrat
How to guide a team through a crisis
No matter whether your team is self-organizing or not, when the shit hits the fan, they'll need strict rules and close guiding to manage the crisis. Clear Responsibilities First, everyone has to know exactly what they're supposed to do. Whether it's restarting crashed servers, capturing log outputs, or just staying the hell out of the … Continue reading How to guide a team through a crisis
Why your boss will love Capistrano
Scaleability is a term near and dear to a CTO's heart. It's also the most important factor in growing a website. If you want to avoid the "fail whale" at right, you have to be able to scale your application to run on hundreds (and, if you're really lucky, thousands) of servers. Let's take a … Continue reading Why your boss will love Capistrano
Continuous Integration with Hudson
Wow - a big, fancy phrase that may seem intimidating at first. Let's break it down: "Continuous" meaning constantly, all the time; and "Integration" - building smaller parts into a larger whole. "Constantly Building" ? Well, that's pretty darn close. So, what are we constantly building here? Sure, we're churning out new features regularly, but … Continue reading Continuous Integration with Hudson
